THE Department of Health has been urged to give more details about a private ministerial office being built in a hospital in Co Tyrone.
The office, which has not yet been completed, is to be made available to the minister, Michelle O'Neill, and her staff in the South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon.
The department did not respond to a request for comment from The Irish News on when it would open, why it was being built and whether any other hospitals in the north had a similar facility.
However, it is believed it will be the first time a minister has opened a private office within a hospital.
Mrs O'Neill is also a Sinn Féin MLA for the neighbouring consituency of Mid-Ulster.
In response to a written assembly question from UUP Fermanagh and South Tyrone MLA Rosemary Barton, she said that the total cost involved would be £5,426.
Mrs Barton said the department needed to provide "a lot more details".
"Constituents had mentioned it to me. If the office opens, then she would be more accessible to the people of the west, but I think that the public needs to be supplied with a lot more details in relation to her office," she said.
"Will it be open to the public and if so what times will it be open for them to speak to the minister on the issues that concern them?"
A spokesman for the department previously told The Tyrone Courier that the office would be used on "an ad hoc basis according to the minister's diary commitments".
He said: "The minister is in the process of establishing a ministerial private office in one of the former nurses' residences within South Tyrone Hospital.
"The office will be used by the minister and some of her private office staff for meetings."
In her time as agriculture minister, Mrs O'Neill initiated the department's move from Belfast to Ballykelly, which is set to be completed next year.
In 2014, then environment minister Mark H Durkan moved to take up office in a new regional headquarters in Ebrington in Derry city.
